The best new audiobooks

* Refreshingly unburdened by an interior life, the characters in Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales for Young and Old (Audiogo, 10hrs 25mins, £25), as the author points out in his fascinating introduction, move swiftly. Samuel West, the narrator, scarcely pauses for breath between the 50 tales. Rich men, poor men, lazy sons and lovely daughters, shoemakers, millers, dolts and donkeys, are all cardboard cutouts animated by their response to events. Snow White’s seething stepmother, a leery frog prince and a Rumpelstiltskin of hotfooted impatience are West’s standout performances.

The other voice at work, though, is Pullman’s. As the storyteller, he lends his own distinctive tone to the universal truths of the tales. Inexplicably, there is no track listing, which makes it a long trawl to find a favourite.

* That James Bond has fans in high places, we have known since the opening of the Olympics. Now a team of galactic actors have paid homage in a series of red-carpet readings of 12 of Ian Fleming’s books. Kenneth – Sir Kenneth – Branagh has drawn the short straw of the least esteemed The Man with the Golden Gun (Audiogo, 7hrs 27mins, £15), while Toby Stephens scoops From Russia with Love (8hrs 50mins, £15) – a favourite of John Kennedy’s – embodying the edgy atmosphere of the Cold War with the moodiest of Bonds.

Hugh “Twenty Twelve” Bonneville, reading Goldfinger (8hrs 43mins, £15), emphasises the spy’s vulnerable side, while all the narrators (including one woman, Rosamund Pike, The Spy Who Loved Me, 4hrs 43mins, £15) take care to avoid the pastiche of the films. Fleming’s prose cuts a dash, even if his mid-20th-century attitudes are decidedly creaky.